The push-up is a widely used measure of upper body strength. For example, push-ups are used in connection with the FitnessGram® youth fitness test, the President's Challenge Physical Fitness Test and the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). These programs all define a correctly performed push-up in a similar way: FitnessGram® uses the term 90 degree push-up; the President's Challenge calls them right angle push-ups; and the APFT defines them as “lowering your entire body as a single unit until your upper arms are at least parallel to the ground.”
During push-ups, the most common difficulty for people doing the push-ups and for people judging/counting the push-ups is to determine whether the performer is in the correct “down” position (i.e., elbows at 90 degrees). In many settings, especially where mass testing is needed (e.g., schools and the military), judging/counting of push-ups is often done by other people being tested (e.g., other students or other military personnel). This leads to inconsistency because on different occasions a person may be judged/tested by different people. This also leads to inaccurate scoring because the people doing the judging do not have the expertise to accurately determine whether the person being tested is in the correct “down” position. Further, a person self-judging/self-testing often does not know whether he/she is performing the push-ups correctly.
Various devices have been proposed to assist in determining whether a user is correctly performing push-ups. However, each of these devices suffers from drawbacks including: bulkiness, complexity, high cost, inaccuracy, inability to be adjusted for users of various sizes, and lack of feedback to the user and/or observer.
Thus, there is a need for a device that is simple to understand and use, relatively inexpensive, small enough to be easily transported, can be used in a variety of settings such as at the gym or at home, provides feedback to the user and/or observer, and is adjustable such that it accurately determines whether push-ups are being correctly performed regardless of the size of the user. These and other advantages of the invention will be apparent in the description that follows.